I’m thrilled to be sharing a fun picture book from Kar-Ben Publishing on this happy and important occasion.

Chicken Soup, Chicken Soupby Pamela Mayer and Deborah Melmon tells the story of Sophie and her multicultural family. Sophie loves her two grandmas: Grandma Ellie (“Bubbe”) with her dress-up games and her Jewish chicken soup with kreplach and Grandma Nancy (“Nai Nai”) with her painting projects and her Chinese chicken soup with wonton. But how can she tell them that their favorite soups are actually the same? You’ll have to read and find out.

To celebrate MCBD and this tasty book, I whipped up some fun felt food. Felt food always inspires some wonderful pretend play in my home. It is deceptively simple to make, too—just like homemade chicken soup.

I made two little treats that fit perfectly with the book: dumplings and fortune cookies. Both items require the same base materials and just a couple minutes of your time. (Both are also perfect for Lunar New Year, which happens to fall this week, as well.)

Materials:

Felt

Glue gun

Scissors

Steps:

Cut a circle from your felt. My circles are about 4”.

Apply a small bead of glue and fold the circle in half.

For the dumplings, glue around the outside of the circle.

For the fortune cookies, apply a 2” line of glue starting at the center of the circle.

Fold again.

For the dumplings, make a couple of small creases on the edge and secure with a dot of glue.

For the fortune cookies, turn the circle “inside out.” Add a bit of paper or white felt to represent the “fortune.”

Play! That was easy, right?

Because books and projects like this one go so well together, I teamed up with an arts educator friend to create a series of free resources that helps moms like us pair beautiful books with process-oriented art activities. If you are interested in learning more about how to integrate children’s books and art in your home, check us out online. Access our FREE digital magazine, Creative, Bookish Kids, and our growing library of free book and art resources for families at www.KidArtLit.com.

Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2017 (1/27/17) is its fourth year and was founded by Valarie Budayr fromJump Into A Book and Mia Wenjen fromPragmaticMom. Our mission is to raise awareness on the ongoing need to include kid’s books that celebrate diversity in home and school bookshelves while also working diligently to get more of these types of books into the hands of young readers, parents and educators.

Despite census data that shows 37% of the US population consists of people of color, only 10% of children’s books published have diversity content. Using the Multicultural Children’s Book Day holiday, the MCBD Team are on a mission to change all of that.

We’d like to also give a shout-out to MCBD’s impressive CoHost Team who not only hosts the book review link-up on celebration day, but who also work tirelessly to spread the word of this event. View our CoHostsHERE.

Chickadee Lit

I write about reading for families and children. You can make storytime spectacular with my reviews of children's literature; expert techniques for raising readers; book lists for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and big kids; and more.